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2012/11/02

Neatorama

Neatorama

Silver Skull Houses

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PDT

skulls

Danish artist Frodo Mikkelsen made several silver skulls with quaint houses on top. Perhaps he does so to suggest that death is ever nearby the most tranquil human settings.

Is that an outhouse on the right?

Artist's Website -via Junkculture

The Shoes Appreciation Society

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 04:00 AM PDT

n

Each style of shoe has a name, and proper use of those names will help you shop for the right shoe. And the left one, too! Niege Borges created this poster to help you visualize shoes by their names -or to learn the names of the shoes you are thinking about. Too bad the print is sold out, but if there's demand, maybe he'll make more. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Affectionate Violins

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 03:03 AM PDT

violins

When you're not looking, Philippe Guillerm's violins are flirting with each other, getting into trouble or performing stunts. He makes amusing sculptures of anthropomorphic violins that look like they popped out of a Disney cartoon.

Link -via My Darkened Eyes

Uncle Drew Chapter 2

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 02:00 AM PDT

In the first chapter of Uncle Drew, Pepsi Max teamed up with NBA star Kyrie Irving to play a little prank on people. Now, they are back for Chapter 2.

In the first installment they dressed him up as an old man named Uncle Drew and brought him to a pickup game. The film crew explained to the participants that they were filming Uncle Drew's nephew, a prospect trying to work his way to the NBA - really just an actor. When they need an extra player for the game, the nephew suggest his Uncle, he still has game. Little do the participants know but Uncle Drew is really Kyrie Irving and he slowly takes over the game.

The second installment is essentially the same thing, just add Kevin Love as Kyrie's friend and Bill Russell as... some old guy. It may be the same prank but it's still funny to me.

Is it real? Probably not, but who cares. Apparently this was written and directed by Kyrie Irving himself.

-Via VVV

Marilyn Sunderlin's Amazing Gourds

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 01:00 AM PDT

gourd

Marilyn Sunderlin, an artist in Utah, takes dried gourds and turns them into colorful sculptures:

I carve the gourds with a high-speed carving/engraving tool that is powered by compressed air, which I purchased from Profitable Hobbies for the fine detail carving. I purchased the Optima II Plus carving tool from Treeline (The Woodcarvers Specialist), for larger and faster cuts. I can purchase different size burrs for both tools, so I can carve a wide variety of textures on my gourds. [...]

My favorite medium is oils, because they stay moist longer and allows more flexibility in blending the colors. I also use acrylics and wood stains. I have tried dyes, but prefer the wood stains to dyes. I use the acrylics for the inside of the gourd because it is so porous. Remember to use a wood sealer first on all carved areas before painting. This will help the paint to stay its true color.

Link -via Oddity Central

Poor Abby

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 12:00 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Four-year-old Abby is tired of "Bronco Bama" and Mitt Romney. We're all tired, Abby. But the election will be over soon. Abby was reacting to hearing yet another election story on NPR. So NPR has issued an apology to Abby. Link

How to Make Glow-in-the-Dark Cupcakes

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 11:00 PM PDT

Although the cook at Recipe Snobs has Halloween in mind, kids will enjoy anything glow-in-the-dark any time of year. Who could blame them? Everything is better when it glows in blacklight. This cook made cupcake frosting glow by dipping it in tonic water.

Link -via Foodbeast

Salt Facts

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 10:00 PM PDT

Fantastic Four The Thing

As far as information on a salt grinder goes- this is one of the more interesting things I have seen. It sure beats contains high levels of sodium. It does make you wonder though, what does it say on the pepper grinder?

-Via Tastefully Offensive

Ludwig van Joker

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 09:00 PM PDT

Joker

A bit of madness helps with the music. French artist and custom toymaker Oskunk applied acrylic paint to a bust of Beethoven to turn the composter into Heath Ledger's Joker.

Link -via it8bit

NMA Explains the Lucasfilm Buyout

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 08:00 PM PDT

(YouTube link)

Next Media Animation shows us their version of the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm. This is the dialog-free animation, which can be edited to fit your news copy, should you be a subscriber. What that means for us is that it's longer than the finished news clips we are used to seeing from NMA. At YouTube, it's described as "Star Wars Episode 7 Official Trailer." -via Blame It On The Voices

The Sweetest Graffiti Ever Slapped On A Wall

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 07:00 PM PDT

Montreal's sweetest street artist is Shelley Miller, who has been creating murals and graffiti pieces made entirely out of cake icing on walls all over town:

As a form of inscribing the shifting meanings and uses of urban space, Miller takes graffiti’s decorative dimensions to an extreme, adorning the visual landscape with the same technique that one would a cake complete with swirling piped borders and edible roses.

Miller has been working with sugar for more than 10 years in her site-specific practice, engaging with issues of spectacle, consumer culture, excess, waste as well as the historical links between sugar and slavery…

Her works look amazing, but they must attract ants like crazy!

Link  --via Laughing Squid

Dramatic Kitty

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Such a drama queen. A cute, cuddly, funny noise making- drama queen.

Great. I have now stumbled onto the cat videos part of the internet, and I wanted to get work done today!

-Via The Presurfer

Optimus Prime Chicken Coop

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 05:20 PM PDT

Optimus Prime

Autochickens, roll out! shOOter---, a member of Overclockers Australia, built a chicken coop that any child of the 80s would be proud to drive. Or raise chickens in, for that matter. No Deceptifox will dare raid it.

Link -via Nerd Bastards

The Uncanny Edo Period X-Men

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 05:00 PM PDT

Alex Mitchell is back with another historically re-envisioned superhero team- the Edo period X-Men!

This alternate version of the X-Men may have found their powers through magic instead of mutation, but they still look like they'd mess you up for spilling their Sapporo, except for Jubilee who looks too cute to be threatening.

You can find the team, their enemies, and the story behind each character at Alex's DeviantART page below. 

Link  --via The Mary Sue

Helicopter Hair

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 04:06 PM PDT

hair

You are cleared for takeoff in this hair sculpture by Olaf Breuning, an artist in many different media. Note that the link is safe, but Breuning's main site is NSFW.

Link -via Geekologie

The Owl who is Scared of the Outdoors

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Amateur photographer Mark Bridger was at the Knowsley Safari Park near Liverpool, England, when he spotted a ghost-like figure staring out of a brick house window. He's just found Gandalf the Grey (Owl, that is):

Gandalf the Great Grey Owl gets scared flying out in the open so his owners have built his aviary inside a brick shed. He now spends his days watching the world go by out of his window. "He is a bit of a wuss as he doesn't like flying in big open spaces," said owner Janet Southard [...]

"When we moved here we put him in the shed temporarily while we built his aviary outside. "But he didn't want to move so now he has an aviary inside the lovely red brick shed.

The Daily Telegraph has the story: Link

Happiest Man Alive

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 03:00 PM PDT

Fantastic Four The Thing

Scientists have located a man they believe to be the happiest person on the planet. Matthieu Ricard was born on the 15th of February in 1946, in the commune of Aix-les-Bains in south-eastern France. The son of celebrated French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and painter Yahne Le Toumelin, Ricard was raised in a vastly intellectual community. He worked a molecular geneticist, and in 1972, after completion of his doctoral thesis, he left his life's work to become a Buddhist monk.

Ricard has been promoting his message of happiness for years, but neuroscientist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin put that it the test. 256 sensors were attached to Ricard's skull, they were scanning the level of gamma waves his brain produced. While the scan commenced, Ricard meditated.

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.

The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.

Ricard is the author and photographer of several books including Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill.

-Via NY Daily News | Bonus: 2007 TED video with Ricard

Karma for a Thief

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 02:00 PM PDT

(YouTube link)

The cat would not rest until he got a dog treat out of the canister. Then he found out there is no honor among thieves. -via The Awesomer

One Big Gun

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 01:30 PM PDT

Fantastic Four The Thing

Meet Big Bella. Big Bella is a T-shirt gun for the Philadelphia 76ers'. Big Bella can shoot 100 T-shirts in 60 seconds. I don't know much about T-shirt guns, but that has to be a record.

-Via Deadspin

What's Next for Darth Vader

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 01:00 PM PDT

(YouTube link)

What happens when the Dark Lord of the Sith goes to the Happiest Place on Earth? Disney, after purchasing Lucafilm, welcomes him with open arms. The galaxy will never be the same. -via The Daily What

Ketchum Hand Grenade

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 12:30 PM PDT


Image: Wilson's Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30377

That, Neatoramanauts, is a hand grenade patented in 1861 by William F. Ketchum. If someone threw one at you and you ketchum, you'd be in trouble. Unless you have a blanket.

Why? Read on.

From Trans-Mississippi Theater Virtual Museum:

The Ketchum grenade was a hand thrown weapon with limited range used primarily during sieges; the fins stabilized the grenade’s flight and assured it landed nose first, which was required for detonation; this requirement also made them largely inefficient. They were manufactured in one, three, and five pound sizes.

Union forces who used the Ketchum grenade in great numbers in their attacks at Port Hudson found its limitations. Many failed to explode when thrown into the Confederate defenses, and were subsequently thrown back into Union positions. The Confederates also devised a method to render the Ketchum useless by rigging blankets to catch the grenades.

Link - via The Civil War Parlor

Ellen Loves Macklemore

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 12:00 PM PDT

I have been infatuated with the music Macklemore has been producing ever since I first heard the song Wings. I like him because there is actual content in his music, not the empty-calorie music that modern pop-culture seems to be obsessed with. Oh Wiz Khalifa you have catchy choruses about... partying all day. How original. Bieber, you like girls? No way. Ms. Swift, I am glad that you are informing me that we are ever never getting back together but can you be a little more constructive with your feedback?

Finally someone who isn't afraid to actually say something with their music. Whether you agree (I hope) or disagree (you are entitled to that) with gay marriage, or whether you like rap or not - that's fine - but you have to respect how creatively and passionately he delivers his message.

Ellen loved it too, so there's that. Check out Macklemore's new album The Heist.

The song he is preforming is called Same Love, and you can check out the official music video here.

-Via Daily Dot

How 'MST3K' Picked Movies to Mock

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 11:30 AM PDT

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a wonderful show with a great premise: a guy and his two robot buddies watched awful movies and made fun of them. And it went on for ten years! But not just any bad movie would do. They had to be available, full of joke opportunities, containing enough pauses to insert the jokes, and be watchable in their own way. It wasn't easy finding those films.  

Frank Conniff, who joined the show as a writer late in the first season and then joined the cast as TV’s Frank in the second season was given the job to select these movies. During his tenure (through the sixth season) they made fun of movies like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Teenagers from Outer Space, and most memorably Manos: The Hands of Fate. “I think I was given the job because everybody else was busy with other stuff.” Conniff recalls. The job was particularly difficult because for every one movie that made the show, he had to watch approximately twenty duds. He couldn’t skim either. During the second season of MST3K they got the rights to a film that they had only skimmed a part of. When they sat down to write the show, they discovered that there was a violent rape scene towards the end. The movie, Sidehackers, stayed in, and the cast just had to explain to the audience why the female lead suddenly disappeared.

You might think that watching movies all day would be a pretty good job, but to me it sounds like surfing through hundreds of awful links every day to find the ones worth sharing, except far more time-consuming. Read more about the process of movie-sifting at Splitsider. Link -via mental_floss

Kudu Dung Spitting Contest

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Okay, Neatoramanauts. Should you find yourself in a game reserve in Africa and someone asks you to play a little game of Bokrol Spoeg, we have one advice for you. Don't.

You see, it involves putting poop of an antelope-like animal called kudu in your mouth and then spitting it out. Whoever spits the poop pellet the farthest, wins. Though technically, I think anyone who puts poop in their mouth on purpose should automatically lose.

Oddity Central has the story:

The origins of kudu dung spitting can be traced back to tribal hunters who had difficulties catching the fast antelope. Most times the only sign of the animal was a trail of dung, which meant it had been there but it was long gone. Apart from swearing at the elusive kudus, hunters would engage in a contest of pellet spitting, to pass the time. In countries like South Africa, the disgusting custom is so popular that there’s even a championship held every year to find out who can spit a piece of antelope poop the farthest. [...]

The secret to a less-disgusting dung spitting experience is finding a nice, hard pellet and not letting it melt in your mouth for too long before spitting it. People with first-hand experience in the African sport say even the most experienced participants are unwilling to put fresh kudu dung in their mouths, as it leaves a bad taste and attracts the ridicule of other competitors.

Link

Could you imagine the inventor of the game talking his compatriots into putting poop in their mouths? "Hey you guys, I've got an idea ..."

Book Tree

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Maybe I just like things made out of books, I don't know, but this seems magical to me. My obsession is a little strange though, considering I do almost all of my reading exclusively on an iPad. It's not that I really prefer eReaders to actual books, but who has time to go to the bookstore? The define and search feature aren't too shabby either.

I feel like a sellout, but I am stuck in my ways!

-Via Books & Cupcakes

Good Grief, Paperback Charlie Brown!

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Good grief, Tony Medeiros! The artist remixed classic Charlie Brown paperback books with a bit of adult humor to come up with some very funny re-imagined book covers. Take a look at his blog Paperback Charlie Brown: Link - via My Modern Met

Luke Skywalker's Adoption

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 09:30 AM PDT

(Dorkly link)

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Owen Lars discuss the biggest holes in the plot of the Star Wars saga. It just goes to show that George Lucas never had an overarching story to tell; he just made it up as he went along. And besides, Owen and Anakin weren't even half-brothers, they were step-brothers. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Boba Fett Is Quite Dapper

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Is bounty hunting the same as hunting? Because if so, Boba is one of the coolest hunters around.

Link Via Fashionably Geek

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader 25th Anniversary

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Happy Anniversary to the Bathroom Reader Institute! It's hard to believe that Uncle John has been giving us something to read in the comfort station for 25 years. They've just released the new book Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader. And Uncle John's holiday sale starts today, with 30% off the entire store, and free shipping on orders of $35 or more for those who know the holiday code (hint: it's right there at the  store site). And what's more, Uncle John is going to award five copies of the new Bathroom Reader edition to Neatoramanauts, in a giveaway coming soon! Link

One Tough Bridge

Posted: 01 Nov 2012 08:00 AM PDT

For some reason this video took me back to my childhood. I don't know if everyone had this, but the movie theatre close to my house had a small arcade in it, and in the arcade was a truck racing video game. In the game there was a character (I think his name was Archie but I am not sure) and when you chose him as your driver a video would play. The video showed Archie driving his Big Rig along the road when he comes to a small overpass with a sign that read something like "12 Foot Clearance". Archie, being a wily hillbilly, looks around for a few seconds then sneakily says "that says 12 foot clearance and this here is a 16 foot rig. But I don't see no cops around... lets go for it!"

I always loved that, the broken logic. Either these people weren't paying attention (most likely) or they had a similar intuition as Archie.

-via Bits and Pieces | 11foot8
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